What You Really Need to Be More Attractive

It happens to all of us now and then, and it happened to me just a few days ago while strolling through Ljubljana, Slovenia, dressed in my casual American attire and passing a long line of people whose style seemed impeccable. Suddenly, I felt it: unattractive. The next morning, things got worse: I awoke to find a shiny red pimple had sprouted overnight on the left side of my nose. (How does that even happen?)

It doesn’t take much for us to start doubting our looks because everywhere we turn, TikTok, Instagram, billboards, we see people with smooth skin, big eyes, small noses, slim frames, and the whispered (sometimes shouted) message is, You should look like them. Then in comes consumer culture’s promise, And you can, if you just buy… It’s billions of dollars riding on us believing, it’s all just one small purchase away.

But page after page of research on attraction tells us things consumer culture would rather we never knew… because what consumer culture can do is sell us products promising smoother skin, brighter eyes, smaller noses, slimmer frames, and it can convince us that the latest bottle will finally close the gap between our face and the one on the packaging; but what consumer culture can’t do is bottle and sell what science tells us creates true attractiveness.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Do the Hollywood good looks these products promote matter? Yes, they do, but far, far less than consumer culture would have us believe. Yes, at first blush, we do tend to find faces attractive when they’re symmetrical, and when they’re typical rather than unusual (with, say, no pimple on the left side of their nose) (Little et al., 2007; Rhodes, 2006). But pouring our energy into winning at this surface game turns out to be a poor investment, because more lasting measures of attractiveness lie elsewhere (Hunt et al., 2015; Kononov & Ein-Gar, 2025).

No Store Can Sell It

Attraction begins before we ever say a word, but not in the simple way consumer culture suggests (the beautiful woman in the red dress or the handsome man in the black tux pulling us inescapably toward them by the sheer force of their facial symmetry). Instead, picture that woman in red (or the man in black) coming toward us from down the street, stunning at first blush, but as they draw closer we sense they’re tense, rushing, out-of-sorts, even braced for conflict. Our bodies pick up on all of these signals, nervous system to nervous system, we tense up too, and in no time the attraction fades.

Now flip the script and imagine someone new walking toward us, an everyday woman in a Target sweatshirt (or everyday man in Levi’s), but this time, in their gait and facial expression, we sense something completely different: a relaxed, unhurried ease. Again, our physiology tunes in to what they’re transmitting, and we find ourselves drawn to them, sometimes surprisingly so. Because below the level of conscious awareness, we’re all tuning in to each other’s nervous systems, and whenever someone’s presence creates a shared ease, a “positivity resonance,” there’s a magnetic, energetic sense of bonding (Prochazkova et al., 2022; Wells et al., 2022).

We won’t find “open, relaxed presence” in the beauty aisles of our local grocer, because consumer culture can’t bottle that one up. Worse, consumer culture pushes us toward its opposite: it insists there’s always something more to do, somewhere else to be, something more to buy, so it rushes us about, and soon our nervous systems are broadcasting “out-of-sorts” to the very people we hope will find us attractive. If we want to draw people to us, we’ll have to find a new way of approaching them. But, wait, there’s more…

A Sad Irony

After the approach comes the conversation, and how we converse quickly shapes how much people like us, how close they feel to us (Huang et al., 2017), and, yes, how physically attractive they find us (Kononov & Ein-Gar, 2025; Niimi & Goto, 2023). The lever for raising all three is, simply, kindness and responsiveness, propositions that sound easy enough. But demonstrating kindness and being responsive require a willingness to make real time for people and to genuinely engage with them (no glancing at our watches, no wishing we were somewhere else), and in a consumer culture determined to hurry us, that’s no small task.

I’m reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan, though I’ve come to understand it a little differently. A man lies beaten on the side of the road; a priest and a Levite pass him by without stopping; then a Samaritan comes along, kneels down, tends to the man’s wounds, and carries him to safety. I’ve often wondered, why didn’t the priest and Levite help?, and I’ve come to think it wasn’t because they were bad people, but because they were hurried ones. They had robes to press, sermons to deliver, and no time to stop; but the Samaritan, by contrast, was simply taking his time (Darley & Batson, 1973).

There’s a sad irony here, consumer culture promising to make us beautiful one bottle at a time, all the while hurrying us away from the very kindness and responsiveness that science tells us make us genuinely attractive.

So if the science points us somewhere the beauty aisle can’t take us, how do we get there? It takes only a few simple, human-sized practices, ones we can easily weave into our everyday life.

A Human-Sized Practice

As we approach someone new, we call in stillness (the art of greeting each moment with curiosity instead of demand) by slowing down, taking a few deep breaths, and letting our nervous system settle. Then we summon compassion (the art of keeping our heart open to ourselves and one another, come what may) by silently repeating a few words from the loving-kindness meditation, May we all be safe. May we all be free. May we all be at peace, a little softer, gentler, slower with each repetition.

Our body relaxes, our stance opens, and when we sit down to talk, we find ourselves listening and lounging with others, all the things that make us attractive, no purchase necessary. If only I’d remembered this in Europe, pimple and all.